Stolen Lines #2

"Ghosts definitely live here," I say.


During the two years before I entered law school, I had a pretty fun job. I was an applications scientist for a Big Biotech Company (BBC). Now, BBC was based in California, but I was based out of Chicago. My office was my home, and it was a wonderful thing. I reported into my boss on occasion, but for the most part, I lived on the road. My territory extended, at its height, as far west as Colorado, as far north as Montana, as far south as Texas and as far east as Michigan. I had every single state in between, and the travel was...umm...extensive to say the least. I would fly out on Monday mornings and usually not come home until Friday evenings. I used to call my apartment at the time my $1000 per month storage unit. It was kinda sad. I loved the nomadic lifestyle my job afforded me, the flights, the meals, the rental cars, the hotels, the company car, the company phone, etc. All of the bells and whistles that makes business travel fun, I dug.

True story that puts into perspective how much I traveled. During my second week in law school, I was on my lunch break when my cell phone rang.

Artful: "Hello?"

Marriott VP: "Hello, is this Dr. Blogger?"

Artful (confused): "Umm...yes, why?"

Marriott VP: "Dr. Blogger, we noticed that you have not staying in our hotels in quite a while. We were concerned, as our Platinum Members are very important to us. Is there anything that we can do to make sure that you choose us in your business travels?"

Holy crap. Was he serious?

Artful: "No, no...I have not been traveling in a while."

Marriott VP: "Well, you let me know if there is anything we can do to help. Have a good day, sir."

Wow. I really used to travel a LOT.


Because I was not a salesperson, I was usually met with open arms by most principal investigators in the labs I visited. I had the opportunity to travel to large companies like Monsanto and Eli Lilly to give scientific talks to everyone from lab technicians to boards of directors. I saw some amazing research and met some fascinating people along the journey. I also made it a point to visit the various points of interest in the places that I visited. After all, when does one have the chance to do something like that on the company's dime?

Among all of the places that I visited, however, one of the most powerful places, where I actually felt the ghosts of the past, was right here in Chicago. I was on the University of Chicago campus. It was a normal crisp fall day, and classes were in session, so the various areas around campus were filled with kids getting to class, their knapsacks haphazardly slung around their shoulders, young men and young women getting along with their lives. I remember walking across the street adjoining some buildings, but my attention was then diverted by a fascinating sculpture that was in the middle of this flat area. At first glance, I thought it was a sculpture of a tooth, but as I looked closer, its appearance seemed to alternate between a nuclear mushroom cloud and a skull. Seeing as how college campuses are hotbeds for protesters, I thought that it might have been placed there in honor of some famous protest or another.

I moved in to take a closer inspection of the monument. I circled it, staring at it intently and taking in its grotesque, yet haunting beauty. My eyes were then drawn to the unobtrusive plaque attached to the base. I moved in to read the words, and as I read them, I felt a shudder creep down my spine:

Here, on December 2, 1942, a small group of scientists under the supervision of Nobel laureate (1938) Enrico Fermi (1901-1954) achieved for the first time the controlled release of nuclear energy.

HOLY CRAP! This was where it all happened. The start of the Nuclear Age, the Cold War, the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the arms race whose conclusion could only be mutually assured destruction. I could almost close my eyes and hear the whispers of the scientists responsible, those who died eventually from the radiation poisoning and those who wished that they had never succeeded in creating a self sustaining nuclear reaction. I imagined the spirits of the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the ultimate losers in Oppenheimer's and Fermi's work on the Manhattan Project, of which the U of C experiment was a part. I could almost see the spirits of the victims of the Chernobyl tragedy.

"Ghosts definitely live here," I say.

How could they NOT? Seeing this sculpture and being engulfed by the emotions that came from my realizations as to what a scientific experiment begat, my mind turned to so many other aspects of science that arise from the hubris of man. I sat in front of this sculpture for almost an hour, lost in thought and listening to the dead. I marveled at how low key this monument to the birth of the nuclear age appeared. The various young men and women never gave it a second glance. They just walked on to their next class, trying to grab a Starbucks, lost in thought and never thinking about what started over 60 years before on this very spot.

My later research uncovered more information on Fermi's team. Apparently, they conducted the experiment in absolute secrecy not knowing if they would blow up Chicago in the process. Some of the team members succumbed to radiation poisoning later in life, but Fermi went on to Los Alamos to continue his work on the Bomb. The labs were all underground beneath some old tennis courts within Stagg Field. The nuclear era, in all of its glory, sprang forth from this unassuming patch of land in northern Illinois, along the shores of Lake Michigan.

I would like to think that we, as a species, have learned the lessons of our hubris.

I stole the first line of this post from You'll Never Eat Lunch in This town Again, by Julia Phillips. This has been a part of Grace's Stolen Lines series.